


Damage

by TwoMiniKegs



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M, Light Dom/sub, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-24
Updated: 2014-12-29
Packaged: 2018-03-03 08:22:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2844413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TwoMiniKegs/pseuds/TwoMiniKegs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A wounded mage and an even more wounded ex-Templar walk into an Inquisition—no wait, that's how Varric would tell this story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. the invisible wounds

**Author's Note:**

> Will become increasingly naughty. For now, not so much. Will also get rather D/s, so if that's not your thing, you might want to bail out now.

At first, she doesn’t think about it. Doesn’t think about _him_. And that suits her just fine.

Somehow, somewhere, that changes.

* * *

There’s a dotty old woman from Antiva—the dowager duchess of Rialto Bay—who pilfers things during every dinner party and ball in Thedas. No one calls it stealing, not ever, and no one contacts the authorities. Her family always returns the items, leaving the beleaguered hosts with the task of acting surprised and nonchalant, as if they hadn’t noticed. As if they didn’t care.

Careful avoidance is the province of nobility, and it is an art. It’s a peculiar type of make-believe, not quite ignoring the obvious. Acting as though something unpleasant or embarrassing isn’t happening while also acknowledging it with a look, a tiny gesture. Knowledge is power, after all. Status. It would never do to be seen as truly ignorant, therefore one must find a way to delicately signal awareness.

There’s a fine, shifting line between _I know your secrets_ and _why, whatever could you mean?_ Josephine walks it with ease. Leliana skirts it with her ravens, spies, and smiles. But a Free Marcher from Ostwick, one destined for the Chantry but rerouted to the Circle? Evelyn is practically common.

But she was raised as she was raised, and old habits die hard. So when Cullen catches her staring at him and squints in confusion, asks her what is the matter, she’s taken aback.

Doesn’t he know the rules?

* * *

The budding Inquisition is a motley, mismatched bunch—nearly all outcasts, even before they start recruiting. Josephine is the only thing familiar to Evelyn when they gather around the table. The rest of them—the Seeker, the spy, the soldier—make her heart pound, her palms slick.

Some more than others.

* * *

Journeys to the Hinterlands, to Val Royeaux and the Storm Coast, yield even stranger associates—like the foul-mouthed Qunari mercenary, and the even fouler-mouthed elven rogue. The grumpy Grey Warden, shuttered tight like a window in anticipation of a gale.

Evelyn never feels more sheltered than she does when she’s watching them. She, of the staid and devout Trevelyan line, dedicated always to the Chantry, blushingly nurses a goblet of wine in the tavern as Blackwall tells a surprisingly off-color joke. Sera nearly chokes, spitting ale and cookie crumbs along with peals of delighted laughter.

“Oooh, this one’s right _filthy_.” Sera jabs an elbow into Evelyn’s ribs. “Must be in the beard, right?”

These are people more colorful than any she’s ever known. One of them should bear this mark, this bit of the Fade splitting her skin.

It would make a much better story.

* * *

Haven is quiet at night, and Evelyn has taken to bundling up and wandering the water’s edge, past the soldiers’ tents. The surface of the lake is frozen over, but she can hear the currents beneath still flowing. It joins the wild wind rushing down the peaks of the Frostbacks to merge into a single sound, a rhythmic murmur that reminds her of words muffled by stone walls. Of the Circle. Of home.

Her mother would have an apoplectic fit if she knew. All the fighting and the demons, all the time spent dancing just this side of treason and heresy, and her mother would keen and wail about _this_ —nights spent wandering too close to rough men.

Rough men get _ideas_ , but not about Evelyn. And certainly not about the Herald of Andraste, deliverer of all of Thedas.

The sudden giggle that wells up in her chest echoes across the frozen expanse, startling her almost as much as the deep, masculine cough behind her. She whirls, and there she is, face to face with the Commander. The former Templar.

With _Cullen_.

His face is set in a polite, solicitous mask, but there’s a tightness around his eyes that sparks an answering pressure in her chest. She recognizes it, that flash of something animal but caged, instinctive and primal.

Fear.

He’s _afraid_. Of _her_.

It hurts more than she expected, more than anything has a right to when no one is dead or dying or lost forever.

There’s no hint of it when he clears his throat again and speaks. “Are you all right?”

“I couldn’t sleep.” She doesn’t mean to admit it, but something about that fear, about the truth he can’t quite hide, pulls the same from her. “The sound of the water helps. It’s—”

“Hypnotic,” he finishes with a nod.

“Yes.” She waits for him to take his leave, but he doesn’t. He gazes out at the lake’s still surface, and it takes her a moment to realize he’s staring at the sickly glow of the Breach, reflected on the ice.

A rebellious sort of ire bubbles up inside her. He’s frightened of her, that much is fair. So why can’t she bring herself to be terrified of him, as well? She’s a mage; he’s a Templar— _was_ a Templar. Fear and mistrust belong in the space between them, swirling, suspended, like the rocky debris roiling in the gash in the sky.

The mark on her left palm crackles with a sudden surge of energy, and she clenches her fist to cover it, to contain it.

“Good night, Commander.” Evelyn backs away. In her haste, she nearly trips over a rock jutting from the snowy soil, and he lurches toward her, one hand outstretched.

He draws back just before his fingers brush her skin.

* * *

People talk. More to the point, they _gossip_ , so she knows some of Cullen’s history. That he served at Kinloch Hold during the Blight, and that terrible things happened to him when the Circle descended into chaos.

She wonders what he would do if she told him about Knight-Captain Lisbet. She considered the woman a friend. They laughed, joked, spent time together—and she still wound up with the edge of the Templar’s blade biting into her skin the day her Circle fell.

Evelyn bears the scar, a thin red line ripping across her collarbone, but what really cut were the words. They echo in her ears— _blessed are they who stand before the corrupt and the wicked and do not falter_ —and she still can’t hear the Canticle of Benedictions without wanting to vomit.

Lisbet was a friend. She was a _friend_ , and she would have slashed Evelyn’s throat with a fervent prayer on her lips.

* * *

Hours of tromping through the damned bog, and the only things they’ve seen, living or dead, have tried to kill them.

“Hospitable place, isn’t it, Herald?” Varric swings his heavy crossbow off his shoulder and lays it down almost reverently.

“It’s not so bad,” she answers lightly. Light is all she can do right now, because she’s barely keeping it together. She’s soaked to the skin, her clothes clinging uncomfortably in the oppressive heat. Searching the abandoned houses in the area has painted a bleak picture of rampant plague and death, sketched out in journals and letters penned by dead men.

The heaviness in her heart is growing, pressing upward, trying to claw its way out in a scream.

“Here.” Blackwall presses a water skin into her trembling hand. “Filled it at the last camp before we hit the Mire.”

It’s a kind deed, so she tries not to jerk her hand away to hide her shaking. It would do no good, anyway, because he has such old, old eyes, the kind that have seen enough to see everything. “Thank you.”

“My lady.” He inclines his head, a gesture just shy of a bow.

She remembers then that he’s a Marcher, too—from Markham, he’d told her. His deference could be for her title or for the mark she bears, for what she stands for now. Either way, it’s a respect that straightens her spine a little. It doesn’t lighten her load, but it makes the weight of it easier to bear.

For the first time, she thinks, _perhaps I can do this, after all_.

* * *

Confidence is a strange creature—uncontrollable, infectious. With every task she manages, every person she helps, it grows, fed by the smallest successes.

The next time she’s in Haven, she stumbles across the Commander observing as the soldiers train. Instead of heading in the opposite direction, she decides to test her newfound self-assurance—and she can’t think of a harder stone to pound it against than Cullen.

She walks right up to the Commander and asks him questions, everything she can think of, as if she has every right to do it. “I’d like to know more about you.”

He’s easier, more relaxed. Of course, they’re surrounded by sparring soldiers, so he’s not alone with her, and that must help. Instead of hurting, the thought makes her smile. Fear is one thing, and very real, but he seems willing to set it aside.

Most of the time.

He tells her about his childhood, a little about his family. About the Templars, and where he served. A sanitized version of what she’s already heard, which means the truth she finds herself hungry for must be somewhere in between.

* * *

But confidence is also a tricky thing. It makes her forget herself. Like later, when they’re lingering beside the war table, discussing troop movements. Josephine and Leliana have already hurried off, intent on their tasks, so she and Cullen are alone.

He’s alone with a mage, and somehow that thought doesn’t cross her mind as she reaches up to brush back a tiny lock of hair that’s fallen into disarray at his temple.

His fingers lock around her wrist, iron bands that bite into her flesh and grind her bones together. But the pain is nothing next to what burns in his amber eyes—it isn’t anger, not exactly, but it isn’t desire, either.

He speaks, his voice even more punishing. Unexpected. “Don’t touch me.”

They stand there, frozen, a tableau of something so confusing and infuriating Evelyn can’t even fathom what’s happening. Finally, she snatches her hand from his grasp and steps back, taking care to keep her movements slow and measured.

_My apologies_. The words die on her tongue, choked out by the hurt. She’s done something wrong, peeked beyond a closed door, strayed where she’s not wanted. It’s such a perfect, poignant encapsulation of her life that she no longer trusts her voice not to break, and she leaves without a word.

Only later, as she sits beside the fire in her cottage and absently rubs at the rising bruises on her flesh, does she realize that this was her chance to be frightened of him. And she is not.


	2. one step closer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I won’t touch you.” A whispered promise, unbidden, one she’s not even sure she can keep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm taking some creative liberties with the timelines and romance arc. Among other things.

Now that the door is open, there’s no way to force it closed. So Evelyn practices another noble pastime—avoidance. She stays out for weeks, sending poor Harding to scout the farthest reaches of Fereldan and Orlais, occupying herself with every task she can find until the camps and towns run together in a blur. Until Cassandra gently reminds her that there is work to be done in Haven, too.

 _Pretend as if nothing happened_. It’s a solid plan, a good one—and she forgets it as soon as she looks at Cullen.

* * *

He finds her again, this time on the dock that juts out over the frozen surface of the lake. “I owe you an apology.”

“Perhaps.” She turns to him, not even trying to quell her searching look. His fingers around her wrist have taken them someplace beyond polite regard. “Is it because I’m a mage?”

“Maker’s breath—” He rubs at the back of his neck with a sigh. “No.”

“Oh. Because I’m me, then.”

“Yes and no. It’s…” The fur trim on his heavy cloak ripples in the breeze as he shrugs. “Complicated. Difficult to explain.”

“Try?”

Cullen grits his teeth, grinds them together before finally meeting her gaze. “I don’t like to be touched.”

It’s the last thing she expected him to say. Not because she didn’t suspect—there are plenty of soldiers who feel the same way—but because it doesn’t sound very complex at all. “Seems fairly straightforward.”

“You think so?” And then suddenly he’s looming over her, so close that the only thing that stops her from falling off the dock is his steely arm, gripping the pylon behind her back.

 _Andraste have mercy_.

“It’s complicated,” he breathes, low and dark, “because, for you, I would make an exception.”

Her mind whirls, but that pales in comparison to the wilder squall gathering in her middle, a storm of questions and anticipation and something suspiciously like need. “Oh.”

“Oh.” He echoes the word as he straightens, and she almost sways toward him before catching herself. “You can see the problem.”

Problem? The only problem is that he doesn’t have his hands on her. She’d take them locked around her wrists right now, because that would be something— _delicious and wrong and so, so right_ —but instead he’s stepping back.

He straightens his sleeve. “You’re the Herald of Andraste,” he says calmly, “and I command the Inquisition’s forces. It would be wholly inappropriate.”

The old Evelyn would have cared about such things. She was raised with an eye to propriety…and yet, somehow, right now, it’s the last thing she gives a damn about.

He’s gone before she can fully wrap her thoughts around that, stealing her opportunity for counterargument. And she can’t help but think he needs it that way, because he barely touched her, but what she remembers most is the fine tremor in that rigid arm across her back.

* * *

Mages and Templars. Mages _or_ Templars—there’s a choice to be made, and it falls to her, like so much else these days. Cullen makes his feelings clear—they should go to the Order, of course—but Evelyn can’t stop thinking about how Lord Seeker Lucius smiled when his Templar struck that Revered Mother in the head.

The blow was bad enough, but what haunts her is that fucking _smile_.

* * *

Never indenture yourself to a Tevinter magister—this seems like it should be the first entry in the guidebook on how to survive as a mage in Thedas. Only Fiona has, and it may be idiotic, but she hasn’t punched anyone in the head yet, so Evelyn agrees to help. Cullen may not like it, but she’s learning to listen to that small, still voice inside. To trust herself.

Of course, trusting herself lands her in the future. And not just any future, but a grim, hopeless one where nearly everyone she knows—and loves—is dead. So maybe Cullen had a point, after all.

But now she has Dorian—lovely, familiar Dorian, who reminds her of all the best parts of her old life and her new.

* * *

“I do believe the Commander has a rather prurient interest in seeing you naked.”

Evelyn freezes, her hand hovering over the chess board. Maybe she heard him wrong. It isn’t as though the tavern is the quietest place, after all, but there’s food and drink—and it’s not the Chantry, where Dorian refuses to linger, so long as Mother Giselle is there.

“Indecent,” he goes on, perhaps mistaking her silence for a lack of comprehension. “Lustful, if you will. Salacious?”

“I know what it means.” Evelyn can feel her cheeks heating furiously as she moves a pawn.

“And yet.” He counters her move. “You’re a bright girl. I find it hard to believe it’s escaped your notice.”

Oh, the conversation is going nowhere good. Evelyn drains her wine before pinning him with a withering look. “And _I_ find it hard to believe you have a point.”

He laughs, full and melodic. “Isn’t it obvious? I want the filthy details.”

 _There aren’t any_. She doesn’t realize she’s said it aloud until Dorian’s expression twists into a mixture of sympathy and disappointment. For a moment, her gut clenches, and then—

He shakes his head, clucking his tongue like a mother hen. “Well, you’re just not trying hard enough.”

* * *

_You’re just not trying hard enough_.

Simple words, but they open up a whole new world of possibilities for Evelyn. Because maybe Cullen’s word isn’t law, after all, and he doesn’t get to decide alone.

She’s alone in the Chantry, staring at the maps laid out across the strategy table, when the door creaks open behind her. By the time it latches again, quietly and carefully, the prickle over her skin has already told her who it is.

“We have to stop meeting like this,” she murmurs, head bent to hide her smile.

“You joke,” Cullen replies, his voice as quiet and careful as that closed door. “But it isn’t funny.”

“No, it’s exasperating.” She turns, and she’s suddenly glad for the solid weight of the table at her back, because what she expected is not at all what she gets.

Cullen’s flawless composure has slipped. He’s discarded his cloak, and his shirt is askew, the neckline drawn over to bare the sloping, muscled line of his shoulder. His pulse is pounding in the hollow of his throat, a painful throb matched by the frustration burning in his eyes.

“I won’t touch you.” A whispered promise, unbidden, one she’s not even sure she can keep.

He breaks with a groan, surging toward her, over her. His hands pin hers to the edge of the table, pressing hard and then harder, until all she can feel is his heat, his strength.

Then he kisses her, open and slick and hot, and she understands the truth—she’s never felt anything before this moment. She tries to protest and to encourage him, everything all at once as his tongue slides over hers, but the pleading noise vanishes into his mouth.

Overwhelmed, Evelyn drops her head back, desperate for a moment to collect herself. Cullen snatches it away with a low, harsh noise and his lips on her chin, her jaw, the small, secret spot just beneath her ear.

But the _words_ are her undoing, soft and intimate and damning. “You already have.”

This time, when he backs away and leaves her in cold silence broken only by her uneven breaths, she isn’t lost, scattered. She’s shockingly whole as she touches her swollen, tingling lips.

Tomorrow, they’ll seal the Breach for good. And maybe they can both stop running.


End file.
